Yesterday’s medical-blog Grand Rounds, on What it Takes, is hosted by the Prepared Patient Forum. There’s a nice array of diverse posts. Among my favorites this week are from patients’ perspectives: by Warm Socks, on complex and simple physical systems for remembering to take pills and by Heart Sisters, on ditching the bucket list.

I recommend the Prepared Patient® blog in general; it covers patient-doctor relationships, medical ethics, health care economics and related issues. The forum includes a “dial 411” section with links to on-line, telephone and community resources for patients. The website is sponsored by the Center for Advancing Health, a D.C.-based institute.

The center’s stated mission is to conduct research, communicate findings, and advocate for policies that support everyone’s ability to benefit from advances in health science.

2 Comments

Hello Dr. S and thanks so much for the nice plug for my blog, HEART SISTERS and the Grand Rounds post “Do Heart Patients Need a Bucket List?” I too really like the Prepared Patient® blog and have recently added it to my blogroll.

Your own excellent post featured on Grand Rounds this week (‘On Pleasant Behaviour’) is thought-provoking, particularly for us patients. As you say, while it’s understandable that medical/nursing staff like working with pleasant happy people and don’t like working with unpleasant unhappy people, most patients are acutely aware that “how we are” is likely impacting the quality of care we will receive. This is the brutal reality. So if we are suffering, fearful, in pain, anxious, confused – well, we know that we’re not being “pleasant”. I did a whole piece on why patients are often so apologetic because of this hyper-awareness (“The Heart Patient’s Chronic Lament: Excuse me. I’m sorry. I Don’t Mean To Be A Bother” – http://myheartsisters.org/2010/09/15/sorry/

Another example: after I asked the E.R. doctor who had just misdiagnosed my heart attack as GERD: “But what about the pain down my left arm?” the E.R. nurse spoke harshly: “You’ll have to stop questioning the doctor. He is a very good doctor and he does NOT like to be questioned.” (True story!) How comfortable do you imagine I felt after that scolding about asking any more questions, even in mid-heart attack before being sent home? I was very aware that I was not being a “good” patient, and I was also horrifyingly embarrassed that I had been making a fuss “over nothing”.